Minute
by Garmonbozia
Summary: 11/13  No time for a summary.  Seriously, I'm not being ignorant, there is literally no time.  I'm sorry, and I don't like doing this to you, but there is simply no ti-
1. Chapter 1

Let's recap the last ten minutes, shall we?

I decoded the Keeper's infokey only to suffer a massive, shattering blow to everything that I've held to be true these last few months. This was followed by a momentary and entirely understandable lapse into fear and disorientation, which would presumably have remained the case had I not been interrupted by the sudden, unexplained arrival of a massive Richard Roundtree impersonator with a very strange watch who then vanished.

Yes, that's it.

Well, now… That actually happened…

I give myself a quick once-over with the sonic and no, I'm _not_ under the influence of any outside force or narcotic substance. And I'm aware enough to have given myself a quick once-over with the sonic, so that rules out some kind of psychotic break.

And then he reappears. Not at the point from which he vanished, down on the floor by the downstairs doorway.

"Hello again."

"You're the Doctor, man, that right?"

"Oh, no formalities, straight down to business, right, fine, that's nice, _yes_ I am."

"Ain't got no time to be polite," he says. Comes running up the stairs and grabs my hand to shake it. "But if it means that much to you, Hamunaptra Jones, sir, pleasure to make your acquaintance."

"_Hamunaptra_?"

"Call me Mun, it's quicker. Took me a dog's age to find you, brother, you and me gotta talk about something-" 'Quicker' would indeed seem to be the order of the day. For all his enviable calm, Mr Mun Jones is speaking incredibly quickly. My head spins, and it was already thumping, and I don't really have the energy for this, so I shut my eyes and raise a hand to make him stop. Eventually, he notices. "What, man?"

I can formulate no question more complicated than, "Who _are_ you?"

"Ain't no time for that," he says. Face set firm, folding his arms across a chest so big it's a wonder they can stretch.

"I really should insist, you know."

Shaking his great huge afro, "Ain't no time." I wonder would there be time if I was asking him how he gets his hair to do that. I told you already, I'm just not up to this right now, and neither am I in the mood. I don't mean to snap at him, but I do.

"Listen, tell me who the hell you are or get off my Tardis."

He sighs, like I'm really putting him awfully far out of his way, and rattles this next off in one breath. "I'm called Hamunaptra Jones and I'm the best undercover man the Justice Department has, or I used to be anyhow, and I just landed in by accident on a meeting you really need to let me talk at you about only you're being too damn _British_, man, to have that happen, _now_ will you sit your ass down and be satisfied?"

I sit down. Not because he told me to, I just needed to. I am, however, most definitely not satisfied.

I open my mouth to tell him so, and his wrist beeps.

"Damn, man, next time I come back here you gotta stop talking so much."

Beep. "_Me_?"

"Listen to me, _don't move, _I only got-" And on the third beep, as before, he disappears. Vanishes out of the world like he was never there to begin with. Which I'm still willing to consider as an option. I could well have lost my mind. Very likely I should go and get the Ponds and have them tell me that no, there is no trace whatever of an enormous gentleman in a beaded waistcoat.

But then again, he told me not to move. Trying to explain something when he disappeared. For all I know I'm sitting on a mind, though that seems unlikely. I imagine a mine would be much less comfortable than my chair is.

Nonetheless, I imagine he was telling me not to move for a reason. He seems to mean me no direct _harm_ at least.

Which he wouldn't, if he was a figment of my imagination.

Actually, he'd _better_ be a figment of his imagination. I was in _no_ mood to receive visitors today and should this man, this _Mun_, actually be a real actual physical person then he is very much an intruder here in my home at a very delicate moment in my life. How _dare_ he make me think I'm going mad, if I'm not. Which I might be.

Oh, he's back. Appears on the other set of stairs this time, but immediately rushes over to me. Opens his mouth to speak, but I raise up one finger. He shuts his mouth, most accommodating, but looks very much as though it annoys him to do so.

"First things first, will be all be blown to pieces if I stand up?"

"No, man."

So I stand up and shove him in the chest. It doesn't do much more than mildly sway him. I didn't expect it to. But I very definitely felt flesh and beaded waistcoat under my hand, so I know he's real, at least. "_Then why did you tell me not to move_?"

"Oh, no, not _you_, brother, not move your _Tardis_. Otherwise I wouldn't have been able to find you again. Now listen-"

"No, _you_ listen, Mr Jones-"

"Ain't no-"

"It's a time _machine_, my friend, you cannot use that argument here. Now I was rather in the middle of something when you decided to just _appear_ and I'd like it very much if you'd go away for a while." That sounded rather more threat-like in my head. I'm just a tiny bit ashamed of how it eventually came out. I'm not embarrassed, though; he's not even listening to me. He's checking his watch. No. No, he's turning his wrist over, looking into that mangled mass of digitised flesh. The LED numbers are shifting, too fast to keep reading. One at a time, however, they settle and stop. He's got seven out of thirteen numbers on.

"That's the third time you've done that," I say. "I mean, since you came back. Are we still on a timer?"

"Like you got no idea, man. Just me, though, not we. I'm gonna flash out again real soon, but I'll be back the minute after. Don't go anyplace, man, don't move this machine, I only got one set of co-ordinates for you and you need to know what I gotta tell you, you dig?"

Sometimes. With a shovel. Usually when there are things that need to be dug up. Occasionally because there is something which needs to be buried. I tell him that, but Mun ain't got no time to listen to that kind of thing. He's on the other side of my console, with my monitor and my keyboard and _he's_ using them.

"Oh, certainly," I say. "Go ahead, knock yourself out, do whatever you need to do."

"Well, if you don't mind, I don't gotta ask now, do I?" But it's the _principle_ of the thing, I want to tell him. But he'll only tell me there ain't no time for principles of things. "I'm gonna leave you with something oughta explain things for you. Time you get through it, probably I'll be back."

His wrist beeps again and goes right through my pulsing brain.

"_What_ is making that noise?"

"Million dollar question, Doctor. I get time someday, maybe I'll ask you." And it beeps again. "See you on the other side, man." And on the third beep, one more time, he's gone.


	2. Chapter 2

Any other day, and I do mean _any_, this would be great fun. What larks. How mad and interesting is this great hulk of a man flashing in and out of my box at will. Hijinks and hilarity can hardly help but ensue. Today, I just want to go to bed. Just curl up and come out tomorrow when I can bear to think about it all.

But then again, he's left me something, up on the monitor. Another video to watch, which is honestly the very last thing I could ever think to want. But then again, it's only from some commercial news network and therefore can't be _nearly_ as depressing as the day that has gone before.

And then I spot the date in the top corner. April 15th, 2308. The same as the date on the matrix transfer. The day the Keeper died.

Here it comes again. The coincidences that can't be coincidences.

Fine. Alright. Let it play. It's only another thirty seconds, how bad can it be? How much worse can it get?

The newsreader is an attractive Kantari specimen, wearing her feelers woven in a wreath around her head. Very posh, though, very RP, trilling her rattling language out through the proboscis. Thinks a bit much of herself, not my type. Also, red suit with a lilac complexion is, I'm afraid, a No from me. In translation, she announces:

"Stellar physicists in the Roban system were today left scratching their heads after the surprise reinvigoration of the galaxy's central star. While hundreds of Robanian races are now looking forward to returning to their homeworlds, the incident has not been without tragedy. The entire crew and staff of the Dolores, a station placed there by the Institute of Entropy to study stardeath, were destroyed by the sudden re-expansion of the star."

Oh, I think to myself, that's awful. Really, those physicists better get their brains in gear and figure it out so it doesn't happen again. Surely there must be signs, warnings, something to help them prevent such a senseless loss of academic lives and oh, dear.

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear…

That was _me,_ wasn't it?

Because the Keeper died. Was killed. And needed a funeral. And I, thinking it fitting for one of my perpetually echoing species, gave her body to the heart of a dying star, didn't I?

"In related news," the Kantari continues, "The Justice Department has reported the apparent loss of one of their own in the subsequent gamma radius. Few will have ever heard the name Hamunaptra Jones, but here at Wave Seven, we are assured that his undercover work brought peace and balance to the lives of millions. Jones was returning from a mission in 1972 when his ship passed through the radiation field and disappeared. Though no body has been recovered, he is presumed to have died."

Oh. So I owe Mun one, then, do I?

I make a note to myself that I really must stop myself using phrases like 'It can't get any worse'. I should _know_ that by now. Everybody _knows_ it, but I've been around long enough to be putting it into use. A man in his age, I suppose, is twice the fool.

I can smell burning.

He's back. Mun Jones, while I've been watching the news, has lost his afro and beaded waistcoat and gained a silver fire blanket. I point down to where his trouser cuff is still smouldering.

"Don't even ask, man, I don't wanna talk about it. Goddamn forest ate my hair."

"One minute," I say. "One minute here and one minute gone, is that how it works?"

"Sadly so, brother, sadly so. You watch that fine Miss Liusl Grotark do my eulogy?"

"I did."

"I made the Department promise me that would happen if I died in the line of duty. It's in my contract."

"You're not dead though. You're still here. For now. Tell me how it works." For one, maybe I can help him. For another, he's pretty exhausting to watch and want him to be able to sit down for a minute. Or, you know, several in direct succession. He's looking at his wrist, about to tell me again that there just ain't time, but, "Please, Agent Jones. There's not much I can't fix."

So once again, he takes a deep breath, and I make an effort to ready myself for another quick fire barrage of information. Just listen out for keywords, that might help.

"Man, I saw that gamma field coming, and I jammed that manipulator on and just hit for any set of numbers it wanted to give me so I didn't get turned into some goddamn radioactive freak or worse get myself dead but I hit the button the same time the field hit my ship. Done knocked me for six, man, and when I woke up, my arm looked like this here."

A vortex manipulator fused into his flesh. The controls lost, the dial still racing like it was that first time. Still set to just get him out of there, not realizing that it did that a long time ago.

Slower, tired of thinking about it, he goes on, "It resets itself every sixty seconds. Now, if I'm fast and I'm careful and I do it one number at a time, I can set my co-ordinates myself, but it takes the whole minute. One minute here, one minute elsewhere."

"And you have no control over other destinations?" He shakes his head. This maybe isn't the time, no pun intended, and time is perhaps running a little short on us, but I have one burning question I can't help but ask. "How do you _sleep_?"

"You don't even wanna _know_ some of the places I wake up."

He looks brave, looks like he's gone past caring, but you see the way his eyes follow the sonic over his arm. You see how quick afterward he looks down into my face and says, "Anything?"

"…Could always cut the arm off."  
>"Don't think I ain't conside-" Beep. "Okay, man, next time I'm here? You're gonna shut up and I'm gonna tell you about that meet, because I can't keep," Beep, "this up. You're a serious tax on my tempers, Doctor. Don't move the b-" eep.<p>

Bye bye, Mun Jones.

There's nothing I can do for him. His entire body is fused with the vortex and overloaded with residual gamma radiation. He ought to be dead a thousand times over and there's no guarantee that even cutting the arm off would help. I have never in my life had to bite back the word 'cool' so many times inside of a minute. It's not cool, it's horrible. That man is living a life of eternal suffering, never resting, never knowing anybody, without so much as the chance to have a cup of tea and that is _not_ cool. Not by any definition, not by any stretch of the imagination.

But he's a radioactive Shaft with all of time in his every cell and it's not that I'm _shaking_ with excitement, and it's not that it's _cool_ but… But it's really, really cool. Terrible for him. But really cool. But awful. But he's so cool. This, this is the definition of being 'torn'.


	3. Chapter 3

He's quite refreshing too, as well as cool. When an ordinary person says they'll be back in a minute, that can mean anything up to six months. Well. Ordinary people usually average out at between twelve minutes and an hour. But it _can_ be up to six months. I have been on either side of that exchange.

But when _Hamunaptra Jones_ says it... Yeah. Mun Jones _means_ what he says. Mun Jones ain't got time to talk no jive, or whatever it is the kids are saying these days, but that sounds right.

Except that I've counted to sixty and he's not back yet.

I get to sixty-five, and hear pounding footsteps outside. Bolting up to the door, barrelling through it. Mun Jones enters, still running. Wherever he was in between, he found a sweater that just about fits, except his chest stretches Rudolph's eyes out either side like a frog's. He picks me up by the shoulders and puts me down at the console. "You gotta move the box, man, move it _now_!"

"You told me _not_ to move the box! And she's a _Tardis_, thank you very much, I only ever call her a 'box' affectionately and I don't really think you've been about long enough to have earned that right, now do you?"

"Didn't we say you weren't gonna talk so much this time? Do it now!"

"What's outside that door? What did you bring back with you from whatever filthy, disease-ridden place you flashed out to?"

"Nothing, brother! The co-ordinates dumped me outside. You parked your _Tardis_ in the middle of an auction lot, they're starting the damn bidding. Move it or lose it, man!"

I've had the scanners off. What did I need them for? I was settling in for a quiet day of impossibly important research.

I put them on now and see the decrepit, repossessed farmhouse being auctioned. That's on one side. On the other is a very nervous looking country lawyer getting ready to open the floor to three very nervous looking bankers, one very nervous looking socialite and an entirely calm Supreme Dalek. I'd like to stop and tell the auctioneer that this latter should not be allowed to bid, since it almost certainly has no intention of paying, but it's probably best we just leave.

I head us for the eighties. A time of wealth and prosperity. I have feeling there's a reason that every time I end up in the _Depression_ era I meet a Dalek. Also, the eighties are close by.

This whole process, from being carried to the console to landing outside the glass-fronted offices of Pierce and Pierce on Wall Street where no one can afford to buy me out of home and travel, takes about fifty seconds. Mun is leaning over me with his marker out again, taking down the new co-ordinates.

At about the same time, the door opens, and Mun leans in.

I'm not joking.

Mun leans in from outside with a mouthful of baguette sandwich and a strawberry milkshake and shouts, "Doctor, what do you want from the deli?"

The Mun next to me, the one with the marker, has stopped to stare. Now he beeps, swears at the number sequence on his arm, and vanishes.

To the one at the door, I say, "…Tuna sandwich?"

"And what? Like, tea?"

"No, it'll be American tea. Coffee's fine."

He pops out, closes the door. Almost immediately he appears again. Behind me, this time. At the end of his co-ordinate arm, he holds out a brown paper bag, while in the other he has the marker, fixing one of the digits. The rest of his baguette is cradled, childlike, in the crook of his elbow.

"Got my digits mixed up, man. Distracted by my own arrival and I took them down wrong. I been on Wall Street in 1984 for a half-hour in a Rudolph sweater, man, and it has not been fun."

"A consecutive half hour or-"

"No, a half-hour total. So where'd we get to, brother, what was the talk?"

New York Deli Tuna Sandwich. I have had all sorts of delicacies from all sorts of worlds. Stuffed dormice with the Greeks, charcoal-smoked Perigriff larvae with the Borsins, but nothing compares. New York Deli Tuna Sandwich.

"_Doctor_!"

"What? Hm? Oh, sorry, um… something about a… a meeting? In the seventies?"

"So you're actually gonna let me talk about that this time, huh?"

Beep.

"What's the matter with it?" I ask him. "No way that was a minute."

"Yeah it was. I flashed back in, I was still on my way back from the deli. Catch you in sixty, man."

And he's gone. Again. I'm getting a bit sick of saying that, if I'm honest. He's usually gone. He is, in fact, gone roughly half the time.

So I count to sixty. Sixty seconds to enjoy a coffee I _very_ much need and a New York Deli Tuna Sandwich. There are worse ways to spend sixty seconds. There are things you can do that teach you to appreciate the length and scope of sixty seconds.

Mun Jones, all six-and-a-half-by-three of him, reappears in the air directly above my head. He crash-lands exactly where the physics of the situation would dictate. You're never quite aware enough of your own knees and elbows until they're poking into you. For now, it doesn't hurt. But let's just say I'm not looking forward to tomorrow morning.

The worse sin is the sight of my New York Deli Tuna Sandwich, half-eaten, lying butterflied at the base of the console with its delicious mayo innards smeared across the floor. And my coffee is lost. No, it's not, it's soaking through my sleeve, and Mun's sweater.

"Doctor?"

"Down here."

"Damn, man, sorry. Flashed out to Korzor."

Korzor, nicknamed the Bubble Planet for its notoriously low gravity. You can fly on Korzor if you wear a pair of inexpensive paper wings. But now that it's all piled up on top of me, literally, I'm surprised Mun Jones floated at all.

Thing is, he's said sorry and still he has yet to _bloody_ move.


	4. Chapter 4

"_Right_, that's just about enough, thank you very much." I push him off. Well… My hands are on his back at the same time as he begins to roll, which certainly he could have instigated himself, but I'd rather think I push him off. "What do you have to tell me and how long is it going to take?"  
>"About two minutes if you don't interrupt. I practiced on Wall Street."<p>

"Well, you're about twelve seconds behind so if you'd just start part one very, very quickly-"

He launches in. And as he talks I go about putting into action a plan that occurred to me while I was being crushed beneath him. Not the one to do with lowering his personal gravity. Or the one about the clear and present need for a sheep on the Tardis.

I'm sorry, I have lots of plans, I'm always having plans, and most of them are a bit like that. It's not my fault, there's nothing I can do about it. No, I'm talking about the inoffensive one that actually has something to do with the situation, i.e. the one about doing something nice for a man whose life I am _at least_ partially and probably wholly responsible for destroying and who just brought me a tuna sandwich.

But yes, meanwhile, he begins.

"When I had the accident I was on my way back from a mission in 1972-"

"Big undercover bust, was it? Temporal piracy? Villainous interference in established timestreams?"

"Thought you weren't going to interrupt? And no. Simple recon, cataloguing a newly-recognized split point."

"_Stop_!" I _was_ on my way around the console, but I turn on my heel and put out a hand. Mun doesn't argue with me. I think he knows there are going to be interruptions. This is going to take a damn sight more than two minutes. "Firstly, confirm for me that a 'split point', under Justice Department regulations, is what it sounds like, i.e. a point in time at which something very important can go one way or the other."

Bored, glancing at his wrist, "Confirmed."

"And the Justice Department catalogue these points?"

"It's a pretty new thing, but yes."

"And _what_," I ask, picking up his arm (in both hands) and pointing to those leftover scraps of manipulator in his flesh, "Does this button do?"

"Nothing anymore. It used to be the redial. Fried now."

"Follow me, bring it with you."

"You ain't funny."

"Yes I am. I'm a laugh-a-minute. Everybody says so."

"Like who?"

"Like everybody. Never heard a 'Doctor Doctor' joke? So what happened in 1972, then?"

"Depends which 1972 you're talking about."

"Now who's wasting time?"

"I was at a meeting and they just couldn't _stop_ bringing up your name."

"Who couldn't?"

Oh, but we're out of minute, and Mun is off again on a magical mystery tour of all things and all places, whether he wants to be or not. Still, I suppose he's seeing the sights, getting the full crash course in first impressions. Mun Jones is the reason to keep the kitchen clean, the living room tidy, the city centres litter-free. Always wear clean underwear in case you end up under a Mun Jones. He's the ultimate surprise inspection, and your only saving grace might be that he's as surprised as you are.

But this is no time to stand here musing on the journeys of the ultimate time traveller. Whether there's anybody here to see or not, I have to do something really scary and clever and just that little bit naughty that always makes it better.

You're here. You can be in awe and wonder at me. Perfect! Captive audience…

Firstly I rearrange the boundary matrices of what was formerly a closet just off the console room. It's alright, we're not talking serious remodelling, and all it ever had in it was a broom and the shattered remains of a coolant pipe and a vodka bottle. Don't ask. Long, traumatic story, River was here, not going over that. Anyway, this creates a brand new uncharted space. Secondly, I reattach the locational reassertion requirements in order that this space become permanently fixed, which is something I've never, ever committed to before, not because I'm afraid of commitment or anything like that, but just because you never know when you're going to need the space.

And the eyes of an entire captive audience have entirely glazed over. A lesser man than myself would be attempted to try some post-hypnotic suggestion. Luckily for you, I am too strong and mature a person to make You All Want To Cluck Like Chickens When I Snap My Fingers…

Snap.

…No, it never does work.

In idio… I mean, huma… I mean, _layman's_ terms, I made the first ever permanent room in the Tardis. Theoretically, should her entire system collapse, this little box of a former broom cupboard should actually remain.

That was the scary bit. What, you ask, was so scary about it? Well, it was either going to work or I was going to be crushed as the old girl folded in on herself, becoming a singularity that would _probably_ have developed into a black hole large enough to eventually eat the universe. But that didn't happen, so we're okay. Now for the clever bit. Also the _naughty_ bit. The part you can get fines and prison terms for, if you were the kind of person who couldn't get out of those kinds of things.

For the second time in as many months, I hack into the Universal Star Map. It's not a difficult task; the Time Lords were the first race to develop time coordinates and most of the Map itself was discovered _by us_, so it's not too bad about letting me in. Then again, I have been very slightly barred ever since I deleted a place. The idea of the Map is to be totally comprehensive and I sort of put a hole in that.

Wasn't my fault.

It was the Silence's fault.

If you want a place to carry on existing, you don't let a Time Lord die in front of me there.

Anyway, now I'm _adding_ something. Balance restored, ying and yang, feng shui, other Asian terms, sunrise, sunset, all that stuff.

I am tying a set of temporal and spatial coordinates to the former broom cupboard off my console room. No matter where I am or when it is, those numbers will lead to that place. And I am going to give this very rare and highly sought after set of numbers to Hamunaptra Jones, just in case he ever finds out that I was the one who blew that sun up at him.

He won't hear it from me. Cool he may be but the man could snap me over his knee like a twig.

He is, by the way, back. I grab his wrist and, using the sonic, link the new coordinate sequence to the button that currently does nothing. "What are you doing?" he says. In answer, with all my fingers crossed, I press the button.

He goes away. A moment later, from just offstage as it were, I hear, "Goddamn, man, what the hell-" and the natural continuation of that sentence. I run down there so he doesn't think I've sent him off to some horrible little cupboard at the end of the universe where he'll never be able to find out it was me and break me over his knee like a twig. I should never have said that the first time, now I can't get it out of my head.

"Don't panic," I tell him, "You're still here."

Then I explain it to him. That in any emergency, or any time he needs to tell me something, he can just press that button. Next time he flashes out and back in again somewhere where the forest tries to eat his hair, somewhere that burns or is a bit cold, next time there's a gamma field flying at him, that's his emergency reset.

In my current form, at my current size and… _fragility_, shall we say, I've never been hugged by anything his size.

Conclusion: have to stop doing nice things for people.

With what feels like my last scrap of breath; "So. Mun. 1972?"


	5. Chapter 5

Mun told me about the first version of 1972, the original, before any intervention. He did it all very quickly, within the remainder of that minute. As a result the account was fact-based and spare in its prose and as a result of _that_ it was more boring than it has any right to be.

So, because I like you all and also because it would bore me afresh to relate it as it was related to me, I'm going to tell it the cool way. Don't all thank me at once, I'd like to spread it out, slow release gratitude, it's much better for me, doesn't swell the head so much.

Also, those occasional thank yous, those well dones? They're going to become awfully important awfully soon. I'm going to need those little boosts.

1972. The Godfather came out and Bewitched ended forever. Vietnam was going on, Michaelangelo's Pieta was attacked by Religious Nutter of the Year Lazlo Toth. Watergate! Jane Fonda! Women in the FBI and Atari and Ben Affleck, for better or worse, was born. They put an extra second on the end of the year because humans don't like anything to be out of place and it's one a very few dates when you can put 23:59:60 into the Tardis and she'll actually take you there without laughing in your face.

That's background colour. It's good, isn't it? You can tell me later, when I need to hear it, that I did something good.

Anyway. This is the story of an alien race. They lived on Earth, appearing, so far as anyone can tell, even before the Silurians did. Never did all that much for themselves. Hung about underground mostly. Pale bunch, big bright eyes to get the best of what little light they had, all the usual adaptations. In terms of geological strata, it goes Silurians, these guys, Humans. Living on three levels, like a London apartment block, the residents never meeting or bothering each other that much. I love Earth, Earth's wonderful. Everywhere else, big singular monolithic cultures, but on _Earth_ you've got it all going on at once. You've got the Masai Mara and Massive Attack at the same time; it's just _glorious_.

You can tell me later on how wonderful Earth is, how you agree with me on that one. Later on we'll have an agreement and both glow gently with the warmth of our shared opinion, won't we? Yes, later, we'll still be friends.

Just while I'm telling you about this, in a bright colourful way which you are massively enjoying, if you wouldn't mind just thinking down through some of the nice and cool things I've done in the past, things that you like me for, smart clever things that will live on after me, the kind of things that make you hang about through all this rambling, but if you _wouldn't _mind, just a quick little think.

This ancient race had been hanging around Earth for a while, not far under the surface. Thing about it was, they were a technologically advanced race, and there wasn't an awful lot of technology readily available just under the surface. It was all up above, with you clever old humans (I called you clever, alright?). And this ancient race, they encouraged you. They took your innate cleverness and told you what kind of bits and pieces you might need.

"Ooh," they said, "you know what might make moving heavy things easier? If you invented some kind of process in order to transfer energy across some sort of pivot which would change minimal effort into a much greater force."

And ten minutes later, you lot had pulleys.

Now, in fairness (because we must always be fair and balanced in our judgements and not forget all the nice things that have gone before in the light of one stupid mistake), they did occasionally use this for their own ends. Stole bits and pieces, set you up to sort them out on occasion. But they were the ones who pointed you in the direction of cows and said, "Wonder what comes out of those squeezy bits underneath?" So if they took a little back on occasion, and you weren't even aware of it, never remembered it… well… what was the harm, really?

Well, apparently humans _did_ think there was a bit of harm.

By 1972, this race had suffered three years of sporadic massacres by the people up top. Every so often, it was like your whole species went mental, and wherever they would spot one of these underground dwellers, they would murder it with their bare hands and without remorse. Matter of fact, most of them never even thought of it again, after they'd done it.

They had become a fearful people, decimated, hiding in their own world below, by 1972. Cut off from the providers of their technology, their culture stagnated. As a species they sickened, and seemed apt for extinction.

But when you battle anything back to that level, necessarily the survivors are the best of the bunch, the greatest and the strongest. The last of any race must, by virtue of its continued existence, be an especially marvellous specimen. Not that I'm trying to influence your opinion of anyone in particular in any way at all. All I mean to say is that what was left by 1972 was a core personnel of very strong, very annoyed subterranean lifeforms.

Then, in December, just before Christmas, the humans launched their most horrendous attack since it had all begun, three years previous. And the people beneath their feet had had enough. They rose up. They turned human technology, the technology they had granted, against them, and finally struck back. Revolted. They came and went as though invisible, leaving no trace but the bodies of the dead.

Ironically, they were still inspiring humanity to create. The space program went a hell of a lot further than it was ever expected to. By June, they were carting you lot off the surface in your hundred. Humans escaped into space, and the persecution of the tunnel dwellers ceased. They didn't chase. Some accounts hold that it's because they couldn't master your space exploration technology, but there's something of a hole in that theory. Others are brave enough to suggest that they just wanted peace. Once they had it they lowered their heads and sat back.

Hundreds of thousands dead on both sides, Earth abandoned by the human race.

So what, you're wondering, happened in December 1972 to make your mothers and fathers and all the rest get so uppity and bring about their own destruction?

The Apollo program ended.

December 14, 1972. The last two men ever to manage it walk on the moon. Extensive television coverage was hindered by a bad camera link. To pad it out, news networks worldwide went all retrospective. Filled it out with footage of the first moon landing. Three years earlier. 1969.

Figured it out, yet?

We're still friends, aren't we?

Every time. Every time they played the moon landing footage, it would happen again. We call them Silents now, but they used to have their own name before. It's lost now, nowhere in the records.

I called them an occupying force. It made sense, didn't it? They were there, controlling you, using you, it _made sense_. But I didn't think it through, not really. Rory said it to me at the time, he _asked_ me in as many words, 'But what do they want?'

And I told him, 'No idea'.

I then proceeded to orchestrate, with _wild_ abandon, the genocide of a previously peaceable race by you lot, knowing you would never remember doing it and thereby opening you up to retaliation for crimes you wouldn't even be aware of committing.

It never made any sense at all, really. Not now that I think about it. Now that I think about it, if they had meant you any harm, surely I would have picked up on them somewhere in all those years. I would have found some way to remember like I did after Utah. I would have known before then if they were any kind of _occupying force_, wouldn't I?

We're still friends, aren't we?

Anyway. That was in the first 1972. That was the way it happened before anybody intervened. None of you (I'm presuming) currently live in space, so we all know that that never actually came to pass.

So they never actually killed you. So we're all still friends. Right?

Mun Jones told me all this blithely, factually, and without a single clue what he was really saying at all. Then he disappeared, and left me alone to know what I had done, for one unending minute.


	6. Chapter 6

Theoretically, as soon as Mun flashes out he should be able to flash back in. I'm glad he gave me the extra seconds this time to compose myself. I feel the same way I felt at the start, before he arrived and distracted me with his zany impromptu time hopping. Lost and sick. In need of a good sit-down and a cup of tea, and Amy here to pat me on the back like she will sometimes when I've been stupid.

Don't tell anybody about that, nobody knows about that, that only happens when nobody's looking. Like an Angel. But a nice Angel. Actually, let's not talk about sentient statues again just yet, bit of a raw wound, that one…

Mun, meanwhile, has used his time away to find a change of clothes. He apologizes for taking the extra minute, but it's not every day that he flashes in at a gentleman's outfitters catering specifically to clients of his intimidating stature. If anything, in the cream chinos and jacket, he looks even scarier now.

"Where'd I get to, man?"

"Hunted to the brink of extinction by humanity, the species currently known as Silent struck back, Christmas 1972 and did the same to them. The last of the humans escaped into space."

That was all he really had time to say, last time. All the rest, the elaboration and expounding the implications, and the background colour, that was me filling in.

This time, all Mun says is; "Oh, yeah. Well, then the _other_ 1972 happened. In the other one, it was the _Silents_ that left Earth forever, and they spread out across the universe instead."

"But if they had that kind of technology why didn't they do that in the first place?"

"They didn't. Somebody came back and gave it to them. I told you, man, I was at a meeting. That was the split point. A human out of the future, one of the last they'd chased away, she came back. She said humanity wasn't responsible for what was done to them, but she knew who was. So she sent them out across time and space with a totally different mission."

I don't really need to ask, but what the hell. For the sake of exposition. For the sake of certainty. For the sake of hearing it somewhere other than in my own mind, on the off chance that I'm just being paranoid and really it's not true and everything's still sunshine and adventure. "Which was?"

"_You_, man. Destroying _you_. That's why I didn't go direct back to the JD, I thought maybe you were gonna be needing warned."

So he was looking for me, and he found me in 2308, and followed my signal, and he was round about that star when I sent the Keeper there to burn. All makes perfect sense. I hate perfect sense. I hate the fact that the only time it ever seems to be perfect is when I'm falling, and these days there's lots of sense about and I'm only ever falling faster. I keep saying, keep asking myself when all this will stop. It comes around. It all piles up and comes around.

_Come the time_, she said. Come the time I'd understand.

I'm getting there, River, I promise you that.

"And this meeting, that's when everything changes?"

"Yes-sir."

"Take me there."

"Doctor, you don't look so hot, man."

"No, nor feel it neither, Mun, but take me there."

Beep.

"Ain't that simple, man, gotta be careful of the swing-factor." Beep. "Can't be having you changing every-"

Third beep. Like ever.

He doesn't reappear right away. Something must be holding him up. I don't care. Across the hall, in the war room, I open up that list of dates again, the one that was disguised as River's diary. There's a date there, December 22, 1972, and a location in Florida.

I used to like Florida, you know. Then there was an incident with an alligator, and then the altercation with Bogart put me off watching _Key Largo_, and then the whole Apollo 11 thing and I'm afraid I've gone off it a bit.

But that's us, it must be. That's where I'm taking us.

It surprises me that I can get back to the console, log that destination, take off and land, before I so much as even hear from Mun again. I'm almost worried for a moment. If you think about it anything could happen to him in those outside minutes. What if he winds up somewhere where no electrical device can operate and gets stuck there forever? What if he flashes in somewhere with crushing gravity and is immediately killed? He really must start resetting when he gets to the second beep. He ought to have more control over these things. The man has no fear of death, for heaven's sake.

Down below the console, at the end of that corridor, he staggers out of the new, permanent room (still can't get over that) and my word, why would he fear death? Why would he fear death or madness or eternity or anything else? Somewhere between leaving me and reappearing, he's somehow sprouted a proud, glossy coat of long purple fur and learned to roar.

Roaring words that sound suspiciously like "Get 'em off me, Doctor, get 'em off me."

Oh, my mistake. He's not furry, he's covered in Trinnobids. Nasty little creatures. Parasites, and they _colonize_. As soon as they feel safe in any way they start budding, firing off little hairballs that unfurl into the vicious violet toupees they are at maturity.

Mun manages to tear one off, hurls it without looking. He can't exactly _aim_, you see, there's hair in his eyes, but you'd think he'd avoid the sound of my voice. It flies screaming at me, the big toothy mouth on the leathery lilac underside wide open, waiting for something else to latch on to. It attaches, teeth closing in like needles, to the front of my shirt.

"Mun! That hurts!"

"Tell me about it, man!"

True, he's covered in them. I look up, about to be contrite and apologize. But instead I notice one of them creeping down off Mun's leg, snuffling around the console room wall.

"No!" I cry out, and with a quick blast of the sonic I scorch its nose. It scuttles back to Mun's ankle, where it knows it's relatively safe. The Tardis is a living thing too, and I can have them feeding off her. They'll infest and I'll never get rid of them. Do you have any idea how long it would take to fumigate a place of this size? I have an _amphitheatre_ around here somewhere. "Now, Mun, you're not going to like this very much but-"

"Get the little fuzzers off me, man!"

"_Or_, in order to prevent a cataclysmic invasion of the last living Tardis and everywhere she might set down-"

"Oh, no. No, Doctor, don't do this to me."

"-If you could just keep them on until you disappear again, I'd be much obliged."

He tears another one off his arm. This time he stops, flips a silky purple lock out of his eyes and focuses very carefully, very precisely on me. "_No_… Now, Mun, that's not very mature now, is it? We're all grown-ups here and-" He feints at throwing it. I yelp and duck, and while I'm curled up he hurls it at my back. "Oh, Mun, they're _itchy_."

"_Tell me about it_."

"Look, it's only another fifteen, twenty seconds to go." Pulling the one off my chest, I make my way down the stairs to him. Sullenly, he puts out a hand to take the Trinnobid back from me. It latches to his palm rather than letting him hold it. Things that I most definitely should not say out loud while he's still standing there are just _queuing_ up in my mind.

The still-present image of me being snapped over his knee like a twig isn't powerful enough. It can't outbalance the need, having had a terrible day like I'm sure you'll agree I've had, to take this one little opportunity for cheerfulness.

The grandest and most important of the inappropriate things fights forward and asserts itself.

I look him in the eye and say, "You look like a purple Honey Monster."

Mun grabs me by the shoulder, with his Trinnobid hand. The Trinnobid cries out and so do I when he turns me round, because I'm almost certain he's about to kick me clear across the console room like a goal kick in rugby. He doesn't, though. He just starts to beep and grabs the last of the Trinnobids off my back before he goes.

Didn't get a chance to tell him we were already in Florida, 1972. Maybe when he comes back I'll pretend it just _happened_. Somehow. So he won't, you know, punt me from here to Doomsday.


	7. Chapter 7

Mun comes back, drenched and still with one of the Trinnobids on his head. I raise up the sonic, ready to ward it off, but he brings both hands up. "Chill, brother. It's dead. It just hasn't let go yet." He tosses the great satiny sweep of its fur out of his face, throwing a great arc of water off the end. Into my face. Shouldn't complain, I did send him out with those things still attached. It rolls down over my lips.

"Ah, salt water. I hear they're not mad about it."

"Truth be told, Doctor, it wasn't my idea. Landed in the South Pacific."

"Oh, that sounds nice and tropical."  
>"During World War Two."<p>

"I'll stop talking, shall I?"

"Maybe for the best, man, yeah. Anyway, I had a think, while I was peeling dead purple hairballs off my threads, and I ain't taking you to that meeting. It's too dangerous, man, you're known for cutting in, and it ain't worth it."

"Ah. Well…"

He eyes me. "What've you done?"  
>"Not me, actually, just the Tardis, but it would appear we've moved. And now we're somewhere in Florida. And it's December 22nd. 1972."<p>

He doesn't believe me. Not for an instant. "Just _moved_, did we?"

"She must've heard us talking about it. She takes things into her own hands sometimes. Anyway, we're here now, it'd be a sin to waste the trip, really wouldn't it? We have to at least pretend to go, or she'll get offended, won't you, old girl?"

Someday she's going to talk back again. Someday.

Mun Jones is contemplating strangling me. I can tell now. There's a distinct difference between the 'I might strangle him' face and the 'I might bash his head in with something heavy' face. River's more of a head-basher, she got me used to that one. Amy's a strangler. Rory, bless his heart, is a peaceable soul and only occasionally get a flash of that old Roman bloodlust in the eyes.

"Listen to me, brother," he says. Serious. Honest. Not even chiding or warning, just telling it to me. "Don't get mixed up in this. You change anything, anything goes the other way, and the humans go with it for good this time, you understand me?"

"Absolutely. You have my word."  
>"Doctor, I ain't kidding."<p>

"Neither am I!" Why does nobody ever believe me? Honestly, you'd think I told lies all the time, the pitiful scrap of trust I manage to get from most people. You'd think I was known for it. "It was the first lesson I was ever taught, and they drilled it home every day at that Academy. It's a rule. We do not interfere in established timestreams. It's a definite rule. It's the _first_ rule, in fact, Rule Number One: you do not interfere, and-"

"Oh damn," he says, deadpan, making it up, interrupting me, "Looks like I left the address in my flares."

"It's at the intersection of Jefferson, Adams and Hamilton, isn't it?"  
>"How in the hell did you-"<p>

"Didn't, til you said that. Beep, by the way."

"What?"

His wrist beeps.

"Dammit, man, they all say, don't deal with the Doctor, careful of the Doctor, man talks and you don't know-" Beep. "-What end of you's the top end anymore, careful of that moth-" Third beep.

I'm a moth, apparently.

That's alright, it's dark outside. I'm going to nip out before he gets back.

The Tardis is about a block away from where I need to be. Not only do I not want to be seen and destroy everything forever, as is apparently my wont, but it takes about a minute to walk an American city block and I don't want to be interrupted just yet.

So strange, under streetlights, a place I knew so recently is three years older and abandoned. That same old basement window, where River when she was still Melody and blonde must have looked out and seen the names that made best sense to her, that window is broken out of the hinges. That's where I slip in.

The room below is damp and frigid. And yet nobody has come here. The cage walls are the same, the concrete floor. But the hay in the packing crates has gone mouldy. The Apollo 11 spacesuit is still there, still in pieces. A heavy layer of black damp and grime has gathered on the orange sunshield of the helmet. Still hidden from the world, same as the Silents themselves, and untouched. Of course it is. Every time they sent the humans to space and the news shows needed a couple of seconds of filler, one small step and giant leap, they were murdered indiscriminately.

The hatch down into the tunnel system below is lying open, because the hinge is broken. Both pieces are rusted through, as though it had been closed a long time, and the effort of creaking open tonight was too much.

Someone's already come through here. Come to think of it, they were probably the one who broke the window too.

I'm late.

I keep a marker in hand, not to mark off Silents, but to leave a mark if I'm seen. At least I'll be aware of having ended the world this time.

But the tunnel is empty. That other hatch at the far end is open. There's a time engine down there. That's right. Forgot about that. They already had time travel in 1969. Apparently it didn't do them any good as far as avoiding human persecution went.

Out of that hatch, a voice. A recognizably human voice.

More disconcertingly, a recognizably human voice that I almost recognize. Familiar without being quite right, a cover of a song you haven't heard in a long time.

A Silent, in its rasping, electric English, asks, "Why have you returned here?"

"Because I still believe," she says. Where do I know that voice from? What's different about it that keeps me from recognizing? "You've taken everything and I still believe. You owe it to me to listen at least." A brave soul, no-nonsense, tell them how it is. My kind of lady. "I know what you all want. You're about to rise up and attack my species. I understand that. Here and now, in this time, nobody would blame you. But believe me when I tell you that I've come from a future where we know better."

Admirable, that. Coming back in time at grave personal risk to salvage her race on the eve of their destruction. That's what time travel's for, you know. The wisdom and insight of the future to be used to heal the past. It's poetic, heroic, beautiful.

"The human race is not responsible for its actions against you. You have only one man to blame for that."

Ah, now, she could tone _that_ down a bit. Honestly, what is it with you lot and _blame_? You're all awfully good at placing it and none of you very good at taking it.

"Not only can I tell you who this man is, but I can give you the technology to leave Earth. Take your rage to the deserving door. I have seen the path you're on and you gain nothing through your current plans. Listen to me, and I can give you the means to replenish yourselves, and destroy that which has caused you so much suffering."

There's silence. No pun intended. It's clearly not funny for anyone involved. They've gotten a lot to think about and she's dead if they don't like the conclusions they come to. As for me, now that she's stopped talking, I'm coming to terms with her voice. I know what the difference is, at least. It's younger than the one I was expecting. And, while still hard and forceful, still a voice not to be messed with, it hasn't quite got the layer of ice on it that it will have later.

It makes me creep closer. I run the risk of being seen, but I don't care. I need a look, I need confirmation. She came back and got them right at the start, right at the height of their rage. A ready-made army to set against me. She did, didn't she? I gave her her foot-soldiers.

Step by step, she comes into view. Standing proud and determined, not a trace of her fear on her face. The face is much younger, but the profile is unmistakable. She didn't quite scrape her hair back so terribly tightly then, and hadn't yet discovered the wonders of a shiny black power suit. She's dressed like she fought her way here and I imagine she has. This is the first occasion on which I have ever seen her right eye uncovered.

Ladies and gentlemen, Madame Anna Kovarian, right at the beginning. 'Endless, bitter war,' she said, and here we stand. The end has a start.

She begins to turn around. Maybe catches me in the corner of her eye. I step back, right into Mun Jones, just as he starts to beep again. He just has time to grab me by the throat and whisper to me that he's going to snap me like a twig (told you so) for interfering, before we disappear.

* * *

><p>AN - Big thanks to the people at the Support desk. I couldn't upload and they had me fixed within the hour. I will never ever complain about them online ever ever again, I promise. You guys are the best.


	8. Chapter 8

I don't know where it is that we end up, but the whole place smells distinctly of lemon rind.

"The hell were you thinking, man?"

"She didn't see me."

"Only 'cause you done disappeared!"

One more time, I feel the energy, the fight go out of me. I put a hand on his arm and simply say, "Back to the Tardis, if you don't mind."

"You think I ain't serious?

"No, Mun, I know you're serious and you're absolutely right, I just don't really care right now."

I reach across him and press the button myself. He's still talking. Never heard anybody talk in the vortex before. He's still going when we land back on the Tardis, and I leave him to go across the hall and add what I just witnessed to my so-far sketchy records of the war. I have a few important notes to make.

"I don't understand it, Doctor," he's saying. "You knew what was at stake, I could see that much. Why the hell do you just go on and do it when you know?"

I don't answer. I'm writing things down.

#1: The Second Universal War has nothing to do with it. That's just where I was when I stumbled into all this.

"How can somebody so goddamn smart get so stupid when it's standing in front of him?"

#2: This is between me and Kovarian. End of.

"What I guess I'm asking you, brother, is just who the hell you think you are?"

#3: If there are monsters, if there are armies, if there is war, it is because I have created these things.

"I know you ain't carrying any right now, but ain't you usually a pretty big fan of human beings?"

Oh, now I have to stop writing. Now I have to sit back and think. Not that I wasn't aware I might potentially have destroyed Amy and Rory had Kovarian spotted me. Just that I'd forgotten, in all the kerfuffle, that they weren't here. The things that have happened, the things I've learned, I'm almost glad. Almost. I want them back, even in their current states. I want them and I want River, all gathered here about me.

The darkest of moments might not have been so dark. They might all have been staring, they might have gasped and questioned and hearts might have pounded and trusts might have faltered. But they would have been here. I could have taken their shock, their disappointment, much more easily than I can take my own.

Mun Jones takes my long silence for sulleness. Waves a hand. "To hell with you, man. I only came to tell you they were coming for you. Done that now and I ain't coming back."

"No, wait."

"No."

"I'll take you back to the Justice Department. I can fix you a place there too, if you've got another broken button. It's the least I can do." He doesn't stay because he wants to, only because it's too good an offer to turn down. But now that he knows I'm not ignoring him he sits down, takes a seat at my big long table. Just the two of us. Two's not really enough, is it?

He opens his mouth to ask me a question, then vanishes. I suppose we misses the beeps.

Reappears in the other room and begins his question as he crosses the hall. "What done it, man? What pushed you?"

"Agent Jones, and know that I mean no disrespect by the question, but in all your time with the Department did you ever go on a mission and make an absolute mess of it?"

"Oh yeah. There was this one I still haven't even made it back from."

"No I mean… John Wayne's Rolex."

"…Excuse me?"

"Film called _The Greatest Story Ever Told_, about the life of Christ. John Wayne plays a centurion. Delivers an iconic line at an iconic moment. And all anybody ever remembers is the centurion wearing the gold Rolex."

"Made a mess of time, you mean. I don't know, I-"

"Exactly. Because you don't know. You don't know until you watch the movie and wonder why the hell the centurion is wearing the Rolex…"

He doesn't understand. Which is fine. He isn't likely to understand until it happens to him. Heaven knows I didn't. He watches me a while, to see if I'll explain, but there's no point. Eventually he shakes his head and stands up.

"You need a drink, man."

"Not me, thank you."

"Then _I_ need a drink. This thing got a bar?"

"Yes, but you're going to need a good thirty-five seconds to get there. Flash back to the other room, turn left out the door, keep going left til you reach the spiral staircase, past the doors of the pool, right past the kitchen and it's at the base of the next stairwell."

"…Why do you keep the _kitchen_ so far away?"

"Stops me snacking."

Mun goes. Note to self: when I tell people the truth, they believe me. That's definitely something I should bear in mind for future interactions. Either that or he really wasn't kidding about that drink. Suppose he doesn't get much time to place an order, really.

One way or another, I'm alone.

I look down at the list of things in front of me. The three things so far. Scary things, each with the potential to break a heart, and I haven't got three. Even if I did, I'd need at least one still beating. And I started out one down because of the Keeper, because of that whole twisted story. Which leaves me at… Minus two. So this is what death feels like. Oh, this isn't peaceful and relaxing at all. I'm glad I didn't put in for this the first time round.

Alright, so I'm not dead yet. Nothing's ever that bloody easy.

I need at least one more thing. I need something to put at the end of that list, something to bring me back up to at least a nice even zero. I can live with that. Minus two is bad, but I can deal with zero. I think about it and think about it, tilt the facts one way and the other until, like the coloured mirror fragments in a kaleidoscope, they fall into a pattern that makes a peaceful, mandala kind of sense.

#4: Kovarian is trying to have her cake and eat it. She wants to both save and avenge her race. Whatever justification she may have had in helping the Silents escape their planet and time was undercut by her subsequent persistence in chasing a hatred she no longer has any right to feel. I freely admit that I am in the wrong. This does not make her right.


	9. Chapter 9

The Justice Department don't mind fixed points. Matter of fact they're absolutely dotty for them. Helps them do their job, I suppose. Oh, you want to rescue a bunch of Colokt'an, do you? Well, you can't, it's a fixed point. Want to save the dinosaurs? Sorry, can't help you. What's all this we hear about you wanting to carry on existing? I'm afraid that's simply not an option, sir.

Doctor, one. Justice Department, _nil_.

I have tried explaining this to the Lord Chief Justice. He is still adamant that I will not 'desecrate' (his word, not mine) the Universal Star Map ever again, and certainly not from his headquarters. He doesn't even care that I've made a promise to Mun, which he should, because I _do_ quite like to keep a promise. I am trying to be _kind_, and give him every opportunity to be the bigger man and allow a minor transgression in defiance of much greater ones. But he doesn't see that.

He also fails to see the point of my fixed-point rant, so I begin to explain the concept that time and space are both simply matrices through which objects and actions may move and are perpetually moving. Fixing a point in space, therefore, is no different to fixing a point in time. Really. In effect. If you squint and turn it sideways.

It is at this point that Mun, having changed out of his sea-salted suit and finally removed the Trinnobid pelt from his forehead, finally exits the Tardis.

The Lord Chief Justice rocks back on his black sheriff's boots, wide-eyed. It is actually possible to watch the colour _literally _drain from his face. "Oh, yes, Hamunaptra Jones is alive," I tell him. "Perhaps I should have led with that?"

I slip back behind him and, over his head, point from him to Mun and back again; 'Gimme a minute'. Mun nods. "Evenin', boss."

_He_ begins to explain his unique situation and suddenly the Lord Chief Justice is all bloody ears. Horrible little man. Paunchy, jowly thing, colour of old leather. The three-quarter coat and the cowboy boots, making himself the old fashioned lawman… He reminds me of that great egg in charge of Stormcage, Bracewell.

Actually, I should probably call in on him. Did leave him with a few dozen Silents and Kovarian last time I stopped in, after all. See how he's getting on.

These are the thoughts that occupy my mind as I work that strange, special and slightly illegal magic on yet another former broom cupboard. I was going to give him the Boss's office, but that man could have me arrested if he really felt like it. And nine minutes out of every ten he _really_ feels like it. There was an incident. With an actress. And a Bishop. And I know about it and he'd rather nobody did, so putting me away in a little box somewhere where no one will ever see me again seems to strike him as a plan. So broom cupboard it is. It's nicer for the broom cupboard anyway, sort of a Cinderella things. The boss's office already gets to feel glamorous and useful.

That's my good deed for the day; I've been giving cupboards makeovers. With enough pennies on one side of the scale, one might eventually balance the lead bar on the other.

I finish, with a few seconds to spare and go to Mun. He's still talking to the L.C. Justice when I lift up his wrist and look over the buttons, barely breaks the stream of conversation to point at one and tell me, "That one there."

The sonic fixes the button just as he begins to beep. "Try it."

"Got faith in you, man," he says, before he goes.

Which leaves L.C. and I alone again. "I'm helping," I tell him. "I helped."

He opens his mouth, but gets cut off by Mun discovering that he's just down the hall. I think it's a happy noise, he's making, but I don't want to hear it on a dark street. It's either a raw animalistic joy or the cupboard's too small for him.

However, there is somebody else around, outside the office, who is in no doubt about the meaning.

"Oh," she cries, "Well I'm glad somebody's happy! And _would_ you get your robot hands off me please, love, if it's not so much trouble?"

I know that voice. And in a much better way to the last voice I recognized from offscreen.

L.C. opens his mouth again, but I raise a hand, "I'll come back so you can shout at me, but excuse me just one moment."

Duck out of the office and call back, "Hello?"

At the end of the hall, an opening she has apparently just been dragged past, she wrenches back around the opposite corner. River. Relief floods, washes the rest off in a way I didn't expect, didn't know I wanted until it was here, but _yes_, this is it. This takes it away. Whatever has happened, whatever I've done, it runs from the flash of gold off her eyes. It's like having been dead and breathing again.

"We have to stop meeting like this," she smiles. "All of time and space before us and we keep bumping into each other. People are going to think we've arranged it all or something." I walk right up, take her face between my hands and brush her hair out of the way. Trying to get a good look at her, a moment's eye contact. "Are you looking for Soul or some kind of invisible eye-drive?"

"…Well, neither, but I am now." And now that I'm properly examining her I realize why she hasn't come back around the corner yet. There's another woman there, in uniform, holding her back by the arms. The 'robot' she referred to, I presume. "Hello. Are you a Teselecta, any chance?"

"Never mind her," River tells me. "If you're looking for Soul or eye-drives then I know when you've come from. I know why we've met here and now and so do you, my love."

"…Do I?"

She nods, smiling, waiting for me to get there. "Oh. Oh right. Time's come, has it, River?"

"Yeah."

"Am… Am I supposed to get it now?" I don't really feel like I absolutely get it all just yet. Honestly. This is nothing to do with the fact that all the things I've come to understand have been heartbreaking, have torn at my soul in a way that, even now she's standing in front of me, I can't quite forget. I just feel as though there are things I should probably go and have another look at before we settle that I'm ready for whatever's coming.

"Nearly," River grins. Looks right through me and laughs. "You and me now, sweetie. Break me out of here and we'll take it to Kovarian's door."

"Okay," laughs the Teselecta, "there's a healthy disrespect for red tape, and then there's talking like I'm not here. Let's go, Doctor Song."

She starts pulling River down the hall again, and for a while I follow. "Just out of interest, what did you do?"

"Got caught again. You took me out of Stormcage, remember?"

"And they're didn't bring you back there because…? Oh, because it's full of Silence and probably be run by Kovarian now? We did that too?"

"Yeah."

"Love it, love everything about it…" Raising my voice to address the Teselecta. "Captain, if you must take her away, at least allow me a moment with my wife."

"No."

"Well, always bear in mind I gave you a chance to be nice."

And very quickly, with the sonic, I give her a quick blast to immobilize her systems. River breaks away and rushes to me. Then past me. Before we can quite reach it, though, there are two guards in front of the Tardis. River hasn't got a gun, it's still on the Tardis from when she charged out before. Not that I would encourage her to use it in this situation or even to potentially take me hostage very quickly before anybody notices the other Teselecta back there. Guns are bad. But River disagrees with that and everybody's entitled to their opinion.

"Got another plan?" she asks. There are, by this stage, alarms going off and more guards gathering.

"No, not really." On my left, through a doorway, almost drowned by all the hubbub, a sweet, soft beep. "Yes, absolutely."

By the second beep, River is holding on to Mun Jones and I am trying desperately to hold back his arm before he can reset to his cupboard. I don't care where we end up so long as it's not here. And provided we land feet first on solid ground where nothing immediately tries to eat us. I'm a simple sort, I don't ask for much.

Where we land is a cliff edge, amongst great, gnarled leaning trees hung with flowered lianas. Hot sun and birdsong. Altogether, could've done much worse.

"Doctor, brother, what the _hell_ do you think you're doing keeping me- Oh… well, hi there."

He didn't notice River clinging to his back. Only when the mild trouble of her weight was gone from him did he turn.

"My my," she smiles, slowly, "Aren't you an interesting big fellow?"

I step in between the two. It is a gentleman's duty that his lady may never need to make her own introductions. "River, Agent Hamunaptra Jones. Mun, my wife, spouse, significant other, Doctor River Song."

"Does that make you Doctor Song Doctor, little miss?"

"I was trying to figure this out in the cell the other night. I think it ends up at Mrs Professor Doctor River Alison The Doctor Song. You can just call me River, though." And she extends her hand for a _handshake_, for the _traditional_ greeting, and he turns it over to kiss it. Man works fast… Suppose he doesn't have a choice, but nevertheless, while they are thus engaged, I put one hand on River and reach across to press the Tardis reset button on his arm.

I think that's the hint he needs, because when we arrive he gives River back her hand and takes one quiet half-step backward. Bids her farewell and follows me out to the console room.

Half the Justice Department is piled up outside to stop me getting in. But it's nearly time for Mun to beep again, so there isn't much time to stop and laugh about that.

"Listen," I say to him, "if you ever need me for anything you know where to find me."

"Same goes, brother. You leave word for me in that closet and I'll be there before you get back."

It is only tentatively that I offer my hand. Not because I'm expecting him to kiss it or anything but I'm terribly afraid all my bones are going to disappear into a fine powdery dust within his great big paw. But it's alright, he's gentle with me.

"Good luck, Mun."

"I guess we all need a little of that." First beep. He nods to me one last time, resets to the cupboard down the hall. Predictable as physics, all the guards rush forward towards him. I put the Tardis into motion and we're free again, River and I. She steps out from below, pouting, bereft.

"Is he going? Is he gone? Why isn't he staying?"

"That is the one thing of which he is physically incapable. That and squeezing out of the car in a tight parking space."

She sighs, mourns for a moment, then shrugs. "Oh well. Got you all to myself now, don't I?" Rushes up the steps and, for the first since she appeared, puts her arms around me. All I've wanted since I saw her. I don't even hug her, I _hold on_ to her. Aware of everything, her shape and her warmth, the rasp of her clothes against mine, the cushion of her hair. Aware of clinging to her and not caring either.

River eases back. Sadly smiles and, eyes down, nods. "You understand, alright. We're here now, my love."


	10. Chapter 10

The aurora fields of Tura are in a pink shift, shading now towards lilac and blue. It isn't, in fact, the fields themselves that swirl lift and change colour, but the fine wet mist that hovers over them. The fields below are barren and dry and have been altered to absorb the minerals that cause the colours. It's one of the most prolific pharmaceuticals factories in the universe and also one of the most beautiful places to visit. That's why this is where I left the Ponds. Medical assistance for poisoned Pond, a living mood light for psychologically distressed Pond. I do _really good_ gifts, alright?

River spots her father, sitting up on a sun lounger across the observation deck. Starts towards him, at almost a run. It still surprises me sometimes. She grew up with them, certainly, but now that they know who she is, it's as though years of orphan loneliness still want to act out of her. She wants her parents.

If you trace it back, if you think about why she was taken from them in the first place, think about who took her and what that particular person's motivation was… You human types might be wonderful at placing the blame, but honestly, you won't need to. I can take it with the best of them.

I hold her back by just a half a step. She gets looks sometimes when she calls him Daddy in public. Don't want her shouting it across half of Tura. I don't have to say anything to remind her of that, just the little wake up call. Also, it keeps her with me, and it puts us on a timer. Which, in turn, finally allows me to work up the scrap to ask what she really meant when she said to me, 'We're here now'.

"I meant, you keep wondering where all of this ends. When you get to hit the reset button, if you get my meaning. Well, sweetie, the end has a start. First beep." This, again, is relief from a weight I didn't know was playing on me. As a result, I can't respond right away. I'm taking a moment to enjoy that. So River continues. "From here on out, it's going to be us. I'm not even going to ask anymore, and neither are you. We're just next to each other, until the end."

Rather than promise out loud and run the risk of lying, I reach instead to take her hand.

A moment after that, we reach Rory. He spies River, flinches first, then relaxes.

"How's the neck?" I ask him.

"It's good," he says, "Full recovery."

"Why?" River balks, suddenly furious. "What happened to your neck? Who got you in the neck? I'll tear his bloody head off."

I tell her I'm not sure she will, somehow… Rory then turns to me, "Did you find what you were looking for?"  
>"She's sitting here, isn't she?"<p>

"You know what I mean."

"No. But I found the actual facts, which is probably better than just finding what I wanted to find… That made more sense before I said it. Where's Amelia?"

His face falls. Because River's here, he tries, bravely, to say nothing too alarming, but he can't mask that first reaction, nor his own distance and pain when he tells us, "She went inside. She'll be back soon, though. The fields went red for a while and she… She just doesn't like the r-"

"Oh, never mind, never mind!" I cry out, standing, as she comes through the door over his shoulder. She tries to smile, but she's grey, unslept, looking more like the invalid of the pair than Rory ever did. I could tell her I'm worried about her, but she'll only deny it. Instead, I pick River up next to me and present her, "Look what I found!" I shove River her first step forward, taking a moment to hiss in her ear, "Say something comforting."

I leave them to the mother-daughter moment and sit down on the end of Rory's lounger. "Any luck?" He's been my double-agent, you see, placed here not only to recuperate, but to find out just what it is about recent mistakes and failures that has left Pond, usually so resilient, so utterly disconsolate.

"Nothing, Doctor. She won't talk about it. She's insisting she's fine. But she doesn't sleep, and when she does she wakes up in cold sweats. Jumps at shadows. It's like she's waiting for somebody to sneak up on her any minute."

Me being a Doctor and him being a nurse, we both know he's describing the symptoms of a guilty conscience. It's just that neither of us quite wants to say that out loud. We don't believe it, whether all the signs are there or not, so why should we?

"I've tried everything," he says, "a dozen times. She knows there was nothing she could have done once I was attacked, she must do I've told her so often, but she just… I'm worried about her, Doctor."

I nod to him before I stand up. Tap River on the shoulder and pull her back from Pond. Pond stands away, one hand holding the other arm, not making eye contact. "Excuse me, Mrs Professor Doctor River Ali-"

"-Very funny-"  
>"But I'm invoking best-friend-rights to cut in on this hug. This is not a discussion, this is a fact."<p>

"Alright then, but I'm taking back my father in exchange."

"You drive a hard bargain, Mrs Professor Doctor River-" She shakes her head, rolls her eyes to Pond and steps away.

I move to take ownership of the hug I just bartered my way into. "No, don't," Amelia says. Wrapping her arms tighter around herself, taking another half-step away. I don't care. Whether her arms are free or not, whether she wants me to or now, I grab her and hold onto her very tightly. She shakes, just a little bit. And she's not trying to hide it which means that the shaking is a result of her trying very hard to hide something else.

Gently, quietly, right in her ear, "I have no idea what you think it is that you've done. Whatever it is, though, get over it. I don't say this in cruelty, I say it in forgiveness. Whatever it is, believe me, much, much bigger mistakes have been made. And the fact is that I need you, Amelia Pond. Something massive has been in the pipeline for quite a while, and we're moving into the endgame now. Whatever we've done before, you and I, it doesn't matter. Nothing matters but what we do from here on out. Everything, and I do mean everything, can fixed. But I need you. To be strong and to be brave and to be right by my side through all of it. I can't do it without my people around me."

I try to let go of her. She presses closer and I don't, for just a little while longer. Then I push her away more firmly. Make her stand tall again, all by herself, lift up her chin. She nods. Pond understands it now too.

"That's amazing," River says, and only this interruption breaks the moment.

"What is, Mrs Doctor Professor-?"

"_You_-"

"Oh, I know. I still wonder at it sometimes myself."

"- have been operating entirely in sixty second bursts since Mun Jones left us."

"I have not!"

"Sixty seconds on the Tardis, sixty seconds from the Tardis over here, sixty seconds with Daddy and you just finished sixty seconds with Mum."

"Who's _Mun Jones_?" Rory asks. He's given up on disbelief, since we can almost always produce proof, but he's not beyond thinking we've made up a name like Hamunaptra Jones.

Dragging Amy behind me I return to them and sit back down. "Oh, now Rory, there's a story. And I am a poet, a fact of which I was unaware. Allow me to tell you a strange and lonely tale which I have tentatively titled, 'Shaft in Space'."

Amy, in a breathy, noiseless way, laughs at that. Sits down next to Rory, who looks at her as though she hasn't done that in days, and winds his hand through hers.

The aurora fields shift from lilac and blue to blue and blue. A perfect, roiling sea of probably cobalt calcide or something equally useful, but just the right colour. Maybe, hopefully, my first good omen in a good long while.

We could all use a little good luck.

[See you on the other side, folks. – Sal.]


	11. The Profit And Loss Preview

The cell has no windows, but I presume it must be dawn. These things always happen at dawn. Get it over with and don't let it ruin the day. Good philosophy, you know. If I was going to shoot a couple of people, not that I would, I would get it over with first thing in the morning. Justice Department have the right idea on this one. All in all, I agree with the way they do things.

Apart from this whole ridiculous bit about shooting River and I at dawn, of course. I could live without that.

Anyway, it's River who wakes me. Shouts across between the cells to tell me they're coming. Don't think for a moment, though, that she's been up all night pacing and fretting. As I sit up, she's still rubbing her eyes, running a hand over her hair.

"Funny, isn't it?" I start, trying not to yawn too loudly, "They'll kill us together, no problem, but the night before, it's separate cells."

"Well, nobody ever lives to complain about the blood on the wall, do they? Cells have to be kept to a certain standard. Geneva Convention."

"I lost track last night; what's this actually _for_? Escaping again after that whole thing with Mun Jones?"

"And trying to interfere with a swing-point this week, and that time we nearly ended all of time."

"Oh, excuse me, who's _we_? I was perfectly resigned to my fate, River, _you_ were the one who turned it into an issue."

"That's not how they see it. Anyway," she smiles, tossing her head, "One way or another, we're too dangerous to live."

Must admit, you can't fault they're logic, really. One, two, three strikes against the stability of all existence, and we're out. "Didn't you say they were coming?"

"They are, I heard the door. Unless there's paperwork."

"Mmh. They're signing out the rifles."

For a dead, empty moment, we look at each other. And it could go either way really, but there's no point in getting upset about it. In moments we're both in stitches. "Bloody Justice Department," she manages through it, "It's all red tape."

Which sends me into another gale. There's just enough air for, "_Blood_ red."

River howls, rocks back on her cell bed. I'm watching her when, from the corner of my eye, I see the shadows fall around the corner. I call River so she'll know to relax herself. She stands, wiping away tears, still giggling. And I wish she'd stop because I really want to meet them with a straight face and she's putting me off something rotten.

Teselecta Captain Francesca Holly leads four fairly faceless black-clad grunts down the hall to our adjacent cells.

"Two each and a robot," River says, and that's it, the straight face is but a broken dream, I'm off again.

In her usual soft monotone, Holly asks, "What's so funny?"

River, before I can stop her, "_You_!"

She didn't mean Captain Holly specifically, she meant her organization, but it throws the two of us into another wrinkle and neither of us can explain that. Holly mutters, "Cuff them." River and I, to be as compliant as we can while she thinks we're laughing at her, politely turn and back up to the bars to be handcuffed. Only then do they open the cells and leads us out. The hysteria starts to wear off, but only a little bit. Every time I look at River I still can't help but giggle. I try just not looking at her, but she catches on and starts leaning into my eye line every chance she gets.

"Stop it. We're being taken to our deaths, River, don't let it be said in history that we giggled all the way."

"Do you honestly expect me to believe you wouldn't _love_ that?"

"I want to be dignified if I'm taking you with me."

"Chivalry's not dead."

"…Give it five minutes." We laugh until the armed guard following River jabs her with the butt of his rifle. "Oi! Until she and I are two heaped, bullet-ridden corpses at the base of a wall, I still have part-share in that back." Without missing a beat, _my_ guard proceeds to do exactly the same thing to me. "Oh, very mature." But River brings her cuffed hands to her mouth, stifling another giggle. "What?"

"That was quite good, actually." I glare. "No, just as ruthless, violent comebacks go, but-"

"River!"

"Sorry, sweetie." She thinks I don't know, but she's giving that guard the thumbs-up. I glare again, and she suddenly straightens, decides to change the subject. "What about last wishes? We're entitled to last wishes. That's in… a law. Isn't it?"

"_A_ law, River? It's in _the_ law. Captain Holly! Captain Holly, we demand last wishes."

"Here and now!"

"Wish away," she intones. "We have no obligation to grant them. Stupid tradition was abolished when the rights of prisoners were revised in 3250."

"…3249," I mutter. She was right the first time, but I just really don't want her to be.

"Cigarettes!" River bursts out. "Did they abolish that too? You get a cigarette when you go before the firing squad. Can't be bothered with the blindfolds, but I'd just _love_ a fag, please."

Holly turns. There's a tiny _tink_ of metal as the woman inside momentarily forgets she's a robot and pinches the bridge of her nose. "You can't be serious. Neither of you even smoke."

"_Exactly_," I tell her. "One'll do between us. I've had nearly a thousand years in this life and this is the one thing I can think of, off the top of my head, that I haven't tried. Moreover, my wife asked and it is my duty as a responsible husband to see that she has what she wants!"

River steps up next to me, nodding, "Chivalry wants a puff before it goes." Which just sets me right off again. While I'm creased up we're taken out and put against the wall. They find a cleaner four floors down who smokes and they bring us the contentious little stick. Holly lights it, already eyeing us both like she would like nothing more than to execute us both personally.

River drags deep and exhales, and I note aloud that she's done this before. "I was a rebellious teenager in 20th century Britain. I've done this a lot."

"Give it here, then." Oh my God, it burns. Strips the throat raw. I give it straight back to her. "Oh, River, that is _foul_. Seriously vile, why do people do that to themselves?"

"Gimme. I'll make it last."

Speaking of, the guards are loading their rifles now. Holly is inspecting each one personally. The four who came for us have been joined by another six. That makes five each and just how dead do they want us?

I lean to River and say quietly, privately. "Cutting it a bit fine, aren't you, darling?"

"Sorry? You never said I had to _do_ anything."

"…Wait. You think _I _have the escape plan?"

She looks at me. Stares. Open-mouthed and wordless, the cigarette hanging limp between her fingers. "You're kidding, aren't you?" River says. "That's not funny, my love."

There's a quick, sharp clicking noise that draws our attention. Holly, aiming down the barrel of a cocked gun. She's just checking the sight.

For now.

[A/N – Explosions and guest stars and darkest hours and _yes_, Ruth, biscuits ahoy for midweek. Hope you'll come watch it all go down in the first part of the grand finale, The Profit and Loss. Hearts, Sal.]


End file.
